Andy Slaughter has been Labour Member of Parliament for Hammersmith since 2010. He had previously been MP for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd’s Bush from 2005 to 2010 and before that, Leader of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham Council. Boundary changes to the constituency mean Andy will be the Labour candidate for the new Hammersmith & Chiswick seat for the next General Election.

Early life

Andy was born in Fulham in 1960. He was educated at Peterborough Primary School in Fulham and Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith. He later read English at the University of Exeter between 1979 and 1982. For the next 16 years he lived in Fulham before moving in 1998 to Shepherds Bush.

Employment history

In the 1980s Andy had a number of jobs in the voluntary and public sectors. Andy worked for the British Safety Council, and then for Hammersmith & Fulham Council. He then worked as an adviser to Michael Meacher MP, Shadow Secretary for Employment and later Social Security. Following this he worked as a researcher for the BBC.

Andy studied Law, and became a barrister in 1993. He practised from Bridewell Chambers in Blackfriars, specialising in personal injury and housing law. He stopped practising when elected as MP for Ealing, Acton & Shepherds Bush in 2005.

Political and community activity

In 1983 Andy joined the Fulham Labour Party. He became a councillor for Gibbs Green ward in 1986, and from 2002 for the North End ward in West Kensington. He held his seat for 20 years, being elected Deputy Leader in 1991 and Leader in 1996, and stepped down in 2005 when elected as an MP.

He served for twenty years as a director of Broadway (now part of St Mungo’s), a local charity for the single homeless. He was a trustee of Hammersmith & Fulham Law Centre for over 30 years, stepping down in January 2021, and remains a patron. He was a governor of William Morris Sixth Form in Barons Court until 2020, a school which he helped to establish in 1994.

Andy is currently a patron of The Upper Room, a Shepherds Bush charity supporting homeless people and ex-offenders.

Parliamentary career

Andy stood unsuccessfully at the Uxbridge by-election in July 1997. He was elected as MP for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd’s Bush in London in the 2005 election after the retirement of veteran Labour MP Clive Soley.

In 2005, the Ealing, Acton and Shepherd’s Bush constituency underwent a boundary change for the 2010 general election. In 2006, the newly formed Hammersmith Constituency Labour Party selected Andy as the Labour candidate for the new Hammersmith seat, which he won in the 2010 general election and held in 2015, 2017 and 2019.

Andy has been a member of the following select committees: Communities and Local Government; Joint Committee on Human Rights; Children, Schools and Families; and Justice.

He speaks regularly in the House of Commons on a range of local, national and international issues. Here is a link to his recent contributions in Parliament.

He isa Vice-Chair of the Britain-Palestine All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) and en Executive Member of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East. His interests are reflected in the other APPGs of which he is a member, including: Democracy and Human Rights in the Gulf; Fire Safety and Rescue; Gypsies, Roma and Travellers; Airport Communities; Access to Justice; Leasehold Reform.

Andy has campaigned against Heathrow expansion. He also successfully campaigned against the planned demolition of Charing Cross Hospital and the planned demolition of West Kensington Estate in his constituency. In June 2023, with other west London MPs, he began a campaign against the Government’s withdrawal of Charing Cross and Hammersmith Hospitals from the 2030 New Hospital Programme.

In Government

Andy was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Stephen Ladyman MP, Minister of State for the Department for Transport and served from November 2005 to June 2007. In June 2007, he was appointed PPS to Lord Malloch-Brown, Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and also served as PPS to Lord Digby Jones, Minister of State at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. On 27 January 2009, he resigned as PPS over the Government’s plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport.

In opposition

In October 2010, Andy joined the Labour frontbench as Shadow Justice Minister with responsibility for courts and tribunals, criminal law, freedom of information, the legal profession, civil justice reform and Legal Aid. Andy served as the lead shadow minister opposing the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 and the Justice and Security Act 2012.

After the 2015 election, Andy continued as Shadow Justice Minister with special responsibility for human rights and led on justice issues in the House of Commons.

In October 2016, Andy was appointed as a Shadow Minister for Housing and Shadow Minister for London, with responsibility for homelessness and the private rented sector. He was sacked from the front bench in June 2017 for voting in support of the UK’s continued membership of the Customs Union and Single Market. He continues to work for continued close links with the EU.

Andy was again appointed as Shadow Minister for Justice in October 2021 before moving to become the Shadow Solicitor General in December 2021.